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Our story: ‘Cope with a baby? She was still my little girl!’
 Debbie Pope, 50, from London, was shocked when her 17-year-old daughter Emma announced she was pregnant. “Emma had only been in the relationship for a couple of months, and the pregnancy came completely out of the blue for me, though they’d planned it. I just didn’t know how she’d cope with a baby. She was still my little girl.”
Emma had moved in with the dad-to-be and Debbie fought the urge to demand that she move back home. “I knew it was important not to alienate Emma,” she says. “She’s always been a headstrong, independent girl and I was just the same as a teenager. I thought back to me at 17 and remembered that you think you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t!
“At the end of the day, you don’t want your child getting pregnant when they’re young, but she’d done it and keeping a good relationship with her was the most important thing. So I let her know that I’d be there for her if she needed me, and I made sure I didn’t say derogatory things about her partner. Going in all heavy-handed would never have worked.”
 Once baby Chloe was born, Debbie helped out with childcare and looked after Chloe at weekends so that Emma could see her friends, which Debbie admits was hard work, especially as she had her own job and two younger sons to care for. “When your child has a baby, it does impact on your family life, and you need to be prepared for that. It was also very hard not to interfere, especially when I could see problems between Emma and her partner, but I stuck to: ‘I’m here if you need me.’” Emma’s relationship broke up a year later, but with her mum’s help, she continued to build a new life for herself and Chloe.
“Mum was brilliant,” says Emma, now 22. “I was seeing a guy much older than me, and he already had children, so when he suggested having a baby I went along with it. I told mum very early on because I knew in my heart that she’d support me.”
Chloe is now four, and Emma is happily settled with a new partner and their baby Aimee, 1. She recalls how daunting it was to walk around as a pregnant teen. “I often felt people were staring at me, judging me,” she says. “It was difficult as my friends were all out enjoying themselves or getting on with their careers.”
 Through a mum and baby group, Emma was put in touch with Straight Talking, the national teenage pregnancy charity, which aims to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies and to help teenage parents with education and employment. This is in line with the Government’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy which aims to halve the number of teenage pregnancies in the UK. Straight Talking employs around 50 people, many of whom are teenage parents working part-time, including Emma. She is now a Peer Educator for the charity, and visits schools to talk to young people in their early teens about the reality of pregnancy and parenthood.
“We give them the real facts,” says Emma. “For example, I get them to carry a buggy up and down the stairs a few times. They’re really shocked how heavy it is. We also play games - I’ll show them a statement, such as ‘babies can cry all night’, and they have to say if it’s true or false. Almost all teenagers think there’s always something you can do to stop a baby crying, but the truth is that sometimes there isn’t! I also get them to think about holidays, going to college, having fun with their mates – all of which are hugely affected by having a child.
“Getting out to work with Straight Talking has really boosted my self-confidence,” Emma adds. “ It was very daunting at first, walking in a room of Year 10s and talking about pregnancy. But I really enjoy my job and want people to know the realities of being a teenage parent.”
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